Ace Omicron iPhone, iPad Game Review. Asteroids on Steroids

Ace OmicronRating:

If you are a retro gamer then you will remember the classic game Asteroids where you took control of four straight white lines that formed the shape of a space ship. Also on the screen were a plethora of other straight white lines joined together into the shape of asteroids and it was your task to shoot the asteroids into a million pieces before they plough into you.

Well, Asteroids has been brought up to the modern day in this apparently Asteroids inspired shoot-em up. You take the role of Eden Jackson as she fights for her life as the 3D asteroids hurtle around the screen. The 3D graphics look polished although it’s not the graphics that will make or break this style of game. Instead it’s the pick-up-n-play feel of the game that will keep you coming back for more.

The controls are simple enough to pick up. You can either move your spaceship around the screen by touching on the screen where-ever you would like it to travel or you can click on the air-breaks and fix your spaceship in it’s location and just concentrate on shooting the Asteroids. I found this later method easier but there was still occasions where I needed to move around the screen to avoid imminent death!

While the controls work well it’s often easy to find yourself covering the screen with your hand as you try to move around the screen so it would be nice if an alternate control method was available such as a virtual d-pad and action buttons.

In addition to the asteroids that are careering around the screen there are also random robots and ufo’s ad unlike the passive asteroids these will also shoot back at you! There’s a lot going on at all times and there aren’t any opportunities to take your eyes off of the screen.

There are also 3 styles of play. Classic mode is my preferred style of play. You start with nothing and while you are blowing up the asteroids you can also collect gems that earn you money. Between each level you then get to choose which power-ups you want equip your ship with from a range of 20+ upgrades. Twilight mode has nothing to do with vampires and instead maximizes all your power-ups from the start and your task is just to survive as long as you can while Hyper mode offers the middle ground where the gaining of power-ups is handle automatically for you.

A full on multi-play mode would be nice but the integration of OpenFeint with it’s leader boards and achievements goes some way to address that by adding an additional competitive edge to the game allowing you to compare your best scores to your OpenFeint Friends.

In addition it’s nice to see that this is a universal app meaning that the same game will work on both your iPhone/iPod Touch and your iPad if you have one. There are no additional features in the iPad version but you don’t have to use the 2x scaling option meaning that it looks great on the iPad too.

If you like shoot-em-ups and specifically the retro fun of Asteroids you would love Ace Omicron for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.